The revolutionary platform is the brainchild of Sarah Jones who saw a gap in the market and left a successful career in finance to start the business. Previously she had spent four years at Deloitte in Mergers & Acquisitions advisory, firstly in London and then in Dubai. After two years in the Gulf Sarah left the finance world, recognising the potential of the early-­‐stage e-­‐commerce market and the Mini Exchange business model.

Sarah and Mini Exchange have been recipients of many awards in the last 18 months, including: ArabNet’s Start-­‐Up Demo Award, the prestigious PITME Labs Middle East Impact & Ingenuity Award, a listing in Arabian Business’s 50 Most Influential Brits in the UAE, Small Business CEO of the Year Award in the Middle East CEO Awards and most recently winner of the Enterprise Agility E-­‐Commerce award at the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Mini Exchange was also selected to represent the GCC for the 10th edition of the US-­‐hosted Blackbox Connect programme in Silicon Valley, which is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs.

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Mini Exchange has shown unprecedented growth in the 18 months since launch. Having started with less than 500 items on the site, visitors can now expect to find around 30,000 items listed on Miniexchange.com, with those numbers expected to rise every month. Successfully partnering with more than 250 international brands and retailers, and with many more in the pipeline, Mini Exchange strives to become the region’s number one online destination for buying and selling everything mums and kids.

Mini Exchange has won the following awards to date:

 The E-­‐Commerce Enterprise Agility Award at the Entrepreneur Middle East Awards

You look, of course. But it’s not a Snapchat from your sister. It’s an alert to “check out today’s brain builder” from Vroom, an app developed with the backing of the Bezos Family Foundation. And it turns out to be exactly what you need to turn your harried everyday routine into a teachable moment.

“Magic Ride,” says the header, followed by a suggestion.

“Today, while waiting for a bus or walking to the car, ask Amanda where she would like to go if this vehicle could go anywhere. Talk about why she would want to go there, who you’ll see on the way, or how long she thinks it will take.”

Vroom, which is specifically for parents of kids from birth through age 5 and is customizable for name, gender and age, is available in both English and Spanish versions for Android and Apple devices, as well as Amazon Fire. It has been downloaded more than 50,000 times in nearly 140 countries since it went live 18 months ago. The preponderance of reviews give it the maximum five stars, with comment headings generally along the lines of “Awesome Tool.”

Facebook!

Facebook’s doing, with a new update announced for Facebook Live that adds in a whole range of new features – including, importantly, a new video discovery tab to boost the reach of Live content.

LIVE FOR GROUPS/EVENTS

First off, Facebook’s giving users the ability to use Live in Groups and events Pages. As noted in the announcement:

“Live in Groups allows you to broadcast to just the people in the Facebook Group – so you can go live in your family group, or share a workout plan in a fitness group. Live in Events means you can go live from a birthday party to allow those that can’t make it to join the fun, and a performer can go live backstage to the people who’ve RSVP-ed to the event to give them a sneak peak.”

It’s an interesting addition that'll provide another way for people to use Live in a contained setting. The option for people to use Live in groups could be particularly helpful for business communities looking to host Q and A sessions and the like, while event organizers will be able to use the tool as an incentive for fans to sign-up via Facebook by offering exclusive, behind the scenes access. The advantage of this would be that organizers would then be able to target those who've signed up for future outreach campaigns.